iTunes shut down my iPod, can't "re-jailbreak"

I had my tethered jailbroken 3.1.2 iPod connected to my computer and iTunes was backing it up since I'm on a new installation of Windows. All of a sudden I see my iPod go black, and it comes up with the Apple. So I've been running Blackrain to try to get it back up, but it just keeps hanging at the Geohot image for like 10 minutes before rebooting to the Apple again. Also, I've noticed it sits at the Apple logo WAY longer than it used to.

Is there anyway for me to get it back up without having to run restore? I would REALLY like to not have to restore.